Table of Contents, April 23, 1998 - The New York Review of Books

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Volume 45, Number 7 · April 23, 1998

Alfred Kazin, Laughter in the Dark

Shadows on the Hudson by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Translated from the Yiddish by Joseph Sherman

Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Life by Janet Hadda

Alfred Brendel, Two Poems (poem)

Hugh Thomas, Remember the Maine?

Steve Jones, In the Genetic Toyshop

Clone: The Road to Dolly and the Path Ahead by Gina Kolata

The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and remaking the World by Jeremy Rifkin

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson

John Ashbery, Tenebrae (poem)

Joan Didion, Varieties of Madness

The Unabomber Manifesto "FC."

A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

Drawing Life by David Gelernter

James Fenton, How Great Art Was Made

Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Sketches in Clay Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, opened February 28, 1998 an installation from the permanent collection at the Fogg Art

Bernini's Rome: Italian Baroque Terracottas from the State Hermitage, St. Petersburg 1998; Philadelphia Museum of Art, May 16-August 2, 1998 an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, February 28-May 3,

From the Sculptor's Hand: Italian Baroque Terracottas from the State Hermitage Museum catalog of the Chicago exhibition organized by Ian Wardropper

Bernini's Scala Regia at the Vatican Palace: Architecture, Sculpture, and Ritual by T.A. Marder

Italian Baroque Sculpture by Bruce Boucher

Bernini: Genius of the Baroque by Charles Avery, special photography by David Finn

Barbara Smith, Algeria: The Horror

The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History by Michael Willis

The Agony of Algeria by Martin Stone

Unbowed: An Algerian Woman Confronts Islamic Fundamentalism by Khalida Messaoudi, with Elisabeth Schemla, translated by Anne C. Vila

William H. McNeill, How the West Won

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor by David S. Landes

Robert Cottrell, Russia's Dream City

New Atlantis Revisited: Akademgorodok, the Siberian City of Science by Paul R. Josephson

Ernst Gombrich, In the Giving Vein

Largesse by Jean Starobinski, translated by Jane Marie Todd

Robin Robertson, Feeding the Fire (poem)

Frank Kermode, The Midrash Mishmash

The Bible As It Was by James L. Kugel

Richard Jenkyns, Cards of Identity

Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History by David Lowenthal

Eric L. McKitrick, JQA: For the Defense

John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life by Paul C. Nagel

Amistad a film directed by Steven Spielberg, and produced by Steven Spielberg, by Debbie Allen, by Colin Wilson

Amistad an opera, musical score by Anthony Davis, libretto by Thulani Davis

Mark Danner, Slouching Toward Dayton

To End a War by Richard Holbrooke

Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege by Tom Gjelten

The Choice: How Clinton Won by Bob Woodward

Letters

William A. Edmundson, Lawrence E. Walsh, Clinton & the Jones Case

Contributors

John Ashbery is the author of twenty books of poetry, including Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975), which received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award; and Some Trees (1956), which was selected by W. H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series. He has also published art criticism, plays, and a novel. Ashbery is currently the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr., Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College.

Alfred Brendel is a pianist and the author of Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts and Music Sounded Out , as well as several volumes of poetry. (October 2002)

Robert Cottrell has served as a Moscow bureau chief for both The Economist and the Financial Times. (June 2007)

Mark Danner, longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and contributor to The New York Review of Books, is the author of three books: The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War; The Road to Illegitimacy: One Reporter's Travels Through the 2000 Florida Recount; and Torture and Truth. Danner's work has been honored with many awards, including a National Magazine Award, three Overseas Press Awards, and an Emmy. In June 1999, he was named a MacArthur Fellow. He is Professor of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. He divides his time between Berkeley and New York. His work is archived at markdanner.com.

Joan Didion is the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction. (February 2008)

James Fenton's new book, School of Genius, a history of the Royal Academy in London, will be published in the US in May. (May 2006)

Professor Sir Ernst Gombrich OM was born in Vienna in 1909 and died in London on November 3, 2001, aged 92. He studied at the Theresianum and then at the Second Institute of Art History at the University of Vienna under Julius von Schlosser (1928-33). He then worked as a Research Assistant and collaborator with the museum curator and Freudian analyst Ernst Kris. He joined the Warburg Institute in London as a Research Assistant in 1936. During World War 2 he was employed by the BBC as a Radio Monitor. After the war he rejoined the Warburg Institute eventually becoming its Director in 1959. His major publications include The Story of Art (1950), Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (1960), Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography (1970), The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art. (Also see: www.gombrich.co.uk.)

Richard Jenkyns, a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, is Professor of the Classical Tradition at Oxford. His most recent book is Virgil’s Experience.(November 2001)

Steve Jones is Professor of Genetics at University College London and the author of In the Blood. (April 1998)

Alfred Kazin's most recent book is God and the American Writer. (April 1998)

Frank Kermode lives in Cambridge, England. His most recent book is The Age of Shakespeare. (May 2008)

Eric L. McKitrick is Professor of History Emeritus at Columbia. He is the author, with Stanley Elkins, of The Age of Federalism. (November 2001)

William H. McNeill is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Chicago. His most recent books are The Pursuit of Truth: A Historian’s Memoir and A Boyhood Memory: Long Ago on Grandfather’s Farm, which is currently in search of a publisher. (April 2008)

Robin Robertson's Swithering won the 2006 Forward Prize. His translation of Medea will be published in September. (May 2008)

Barbara Smith writes about the Middle East for The Economist and edits its International Section. (April 1998)

Hugh Thomas is the author of The Spanish Civil War, Cuba: The Pursuit of Liberty, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés and the Fall of Old Mexico, and, most recently, The Slave Trade. (April 1998)